When writing personal emails, always, always, ALWAYS make sure to compose the message first, and put the recipient’s email address in last.
Otherwise, you might accidentally hit reply (or worse, reply ALL!) to the wrong person, and a private message intended for someone else is suddenly on display for the wrong eyes.
True story. *head desk*
I’m 95 pages from finishing up another round of edits on my UF, Dark Scion. Music, as you know, is pretty much my muse. So I thought I would share a few songs from my playlist (most of which I listened to while I wrote the book) that remind me of the characters or the book in general.
Breath – Breaking Benjamin
Dancing with the Devil – Breaking Benjamin
Not Listening – Papa Roach
Thunderstruck – AC/DC (For Ryan, the male main character)
You shook me all night long – AC/DC (also for Ryan)
Almost Easy – Avenged Sevenfold (for Grant, the OTHER male main character)
Burn it to the Ground – Nickleback
Count on Me – Default
All is Forgive – Default
Time of Dying – Three Days Grace
Gone Forever – Three Days Grace
Everything – The Veronicas
When I first saw the announcement for the Kindle several years ago, I was so excited to get one. I devour books and my poor bookcase is so full it’s practically spewing so buying e-books and keeping them all on one device seemed like the way to go. But the price tag made me hesitant. So I waited. I read the reviews. I waited some more. And then I decided, well, I didn’t really like the design of the Kindle. It just wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. After all, I just wanted wanted it to read my books on. What did I need all those buttons on the front for?
I looked at Sony. And that’s about all I did. Sure, people seemed please with what they could do with their Sony’s–read their e-books. That’s essentially all I wanted to do. But after playing around with the various displays I saw, I wasn’t too impressed. And then I heard about the formatting nightmare. Sure, I’m more tech-savy than most, but did I want all that hassle, the unplugging and downloading and replugging and making certain I had the right format and blah, just to read a book I could go buy at Borders and Barnes and Nobles with little to no fuss? Nope. So I bowed out of wanting an e-reader. I’d settle for finding new places for my dead tree books.
Then Barnes and Nobles came out with the Nook. It had the design interface that I felt Amazon’s Kindle was lacking. There were no gaudy buttons on the front, and the bottom had this beautiful color touch screen, so I could always see my book covers in color (or so the picture showed.) After doing some research, I found out that my BN membership wouldn’t apply to the Nook, to any of the accessories, or to the e-books. At the time, BN was charging much more for their e-books than amazon was. Seemed kind of a moot point. The reviews came out, and while there were a lot of nice things said about the Nook, the general consensus was that it was really slow and, at times, buggy. I wanted to test drive one for myself–yes, reviews are nice and all, but there’s nothing like hands-on experience–but my local BN wasn’t carrying any in stock and didn’t know when they would.
I dropped the whole subject and went back to my safe dead tree books.
Months rolled by. I heard about Amazon’s big scandal with 1984 and thought I was glad I’d dodged that bullet. Several months later, I came across an article about Amazon riling up publishers by deep discounting their ebooks and taking the loss, just so they would stay ahead of the competition. Made me wonder what was going on at BN with the Nook. I started doing some surface research (starting, of course, with CNET) and saw they had upgraded their firmware, and a lot of people with bugs in the beginning said that everything had smoothed out. They had even included a beta web browser on the Nook–not something I needed, but nice to have in a pinch. After some digging at BN, I saw that all of the e-book prices had fallen to compete with other e-book retailers.
With my interest piqued, I went to BN–who was now carrying them–and decided to talk to an associate and maybe try one out. It took me all of five seconds to figure out how to navigate the device, it was that intuitive. And after playing with the audio controls, reading several pages of Graceling, checking out the games, searching for my favorite authors using the wifi + shopping feature and hashing out my concerns with the very nice sales associate, I took the plunge and bought the Nook.
It was love at first e-book download.
What are your thoughts on e-book readers? With them? Against them? I always swore I would be a dead-tree gal. But I was so easily swayed. 🙂
Normally, I’m a pretty decent juggler when it comes to school, work and real life. This semester, though, really took something out of me. I lost a lot of motivation to do things I normally like to do, like writing. I did little to no writing, which is unusual for me. Part of it could have been the 3000-4000 level classes, or getting hurt over spring break and, despite what the doctor said I am still recuperating, or the fact that the department I’ve been working for the past four years is having financial trouble and may soon resemble something close to the Titanic post-iceberg: a ship sinking fast.
But school is officially over for the summer. All the belly-aching and incessant worrying I did over projects and grades came to a head yesterday when I took my last final, and I managed, somehow, to make the Dean’s list. Starting today, I have seven months until I graduate and enter the real world. Scary thought, since I feel no where near qualified to have a job in my field. But I’m ready; I’ve been ready for a while now.
And with the start of my 1.5 months of educational freedom (my summer school starts in July. A total bummer.) I feel more ready to cover the ground I lost during the spring semester, starting with my writing. I’ve done the hard part: writing the story. Now, I just need to polish it until it gleams.
5. The herding crouch. Any time we go to the park and she spots another dog approaching, she’ll sink to the ground and slowly crawl forward until she’s assessed the situation, made contact, and deemed the intruder worthy enough of play or, in some cases, issued a quick warning to leave.
4. The stare down. Sheep are rendered momentarily paralyzed by a Border’s stare; so are small dogs as they’re herded out the door into the backyard ;-). And unlike most breeds, she has no problem meeting and keeping the gaze of her pack leader.
3. The Border howl. They might have had the killing instinct modified to herd and gather, but there’s no mistaking how closely related this Ellie is to her wolf ancestors when she lifts her muzzle and sings.
2. The work ethic. The postman has nothing on Ellie and her brethren. Whatever job they’re given–fetching, herding, dancing, agility, running companion, etc—they do it come rain, shine, snow, hail, achy joints, hurt paws, growling tummies, or plain exhaustion.
1. The keen intelligence. Think five year old brain transplanted into a dog’s head. Perceptive takes on a whole new meaning. They watch and analyze everything. Not just people, but their surroundings. Like taking stock of the sleeping dogs in the room and belly-sliding across the floor to the nearest one and then woofing loudly to scare the living daylights out of the slumbering victim.
I love music. I always have. It’s in the blood–my dad’s family is very musically inclined. When I was in school, it was my favorite subject. I couldn’t tell you what a predicate nominative was, but I could sing the scales and the tell you which notes were which. As a little girl, I couldn’t sleep unless I had the radio on. And when I started driving… oh man, the stereo was cranked all the time (and still is). Because, let’s face it. Music is best enjoyed at a loud volume. That’s why concert vendors turn their amps up to point of blowing. But I digress.
There’s just something so emotive about music. Whether it’s a Handel concerto, a folksy love ballad or a hard rock song, the emotion in every melody and harmony strikes a chord somewhere inside me. And the lyrics. I love lyrics that tell a story, that can paint an evocative picture in my head about love, or pain, or grief or whatever.
As a writer, I often try to capture these very emotions in my stories. So it’s no surprise that the two go hand in hand for me. Certain songs help put me in the mood for certain scenes or, sometimes, for a whole book. When I have an image in my head, they help me focus, bringing the images into crisp, 1080p in my head. And when I’m blocked or feeling the creative juices running out, finding a new song, or a new artist to listen to, inspires me again.
What about you? What clicks inside? What brings out the emotion or the inner creativity?
There’s something about the beginning of the new year that makes me feel optimistic. It’s a clean slate. A chance to start something new, or achieve something you didn’t think you could. It’s exciting, thinking about all the endless possibilities you could take this year. Or, the unexpected places where life could take you.
Now, I’m not normally the type to set resolutions for the new year. I never remember them past January. But I do have one big one for this year: Graduate. It’s officially my senior year, and if I can combat my extreme case of senioritis for this semester, a summer course, and the fall semester, I will walk across the stage December 2010 and receive my B.B.A. in Management Information Systems. I’m so close I can almost smell the hot toner on that piece of parchment paper.
So that’s my goal for this year. Survive three more semesters and get my degree. And, following on the heels of that, a job. Preferably with benefits, though in this economy, what entry level person can afford to be choosy?
In the meantime, though, I’ll be plugging away on Seeker and plotting my breakthrough into the publishing world. It’s gonna happen this year. 😉
It’s been awhile since we’ve had a cat. With six dogs, we’re more than full on our share of mouths to feed and love to lavish. So when we had to put Missy, our loyal Mane Coon, down at a ripe age of 18, we didn’t really bother to think about getting another cat.
That changed on Sunday. We got a cat–found him quite literally on our front porch, begging for food. He was obviously someone’s cat at one time, he’s very friendly, but his thin little body said he’d been on his own for a while. We gave him some food, and he’s officially decided our new front porch is home.
My two nieces are thrilled. They’re in love with Front Porch Kitty–now aptly named Midnight because he’s jet black with a star on his chest–and that’s all they talk about. They even made him a box to sleep in, with newspaper and decorations all over it. Not sure what we’re going to do once winter sets in, since right now, he’s not allowed in the house. That may change, or we might find him a new place, besides the wicker bench on the front porch to sleep.
But he’s cute a button. Will post pictures soon.
For some reason, this week went by faster than I imagined. I’m not sure if it was because I was so busy reading, editing and doing school work that I didn’t have a chance to come up for air until today or what. But finally it’s Friday, and that means two days of not getting up at seven in the morning.
Surprisingly, I managed to get almost all of my goals finished for this week. I finished Rampant (cool book about killer unicorns), managed to do my homework, completed my executive summary for today, and am about 3/4 the way done with editing Gloss of Midnight. Now, I just need to finish that today and sub it out. And then start on Finance, so I can start Nano on Sunday.
Am looking forward to my buddy’s halloween party tonight. It’ll be nice to finally hang out with the girls again. And of course, tomorrow is halloween! Maybe I’ll don the skeleton costume again and hide in the bushes to scare the kids again. Not that I need a costume for that…. 😉
Okay. That’s not technically true (I’ve just got that line stuck in my head because I was listening to If you only knew before I came to class.) It’s actually about 1:45 (PM), but I’m ready to tango with the sandman. Not sure why–no, wait, I do. Class is boring and I’ve got this alternating left-brain-right-brain headache.
In other news, I’ve decided to partcipate in the insane rush of words–also known as NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) where the goal is to write 50,000 words in a month. Crazy, I know, but people do it. And, because I need to teach my brain to vomit words for a first draft, I’m going to give a shot. (All other vomiting will not be allowed.) But since Seeker still isn’t finished, I’m just going to work on it, rather than a new novel. I mean, really. There’s only 5,000 words there right now. It might as well be a new novel. So, that’s me. Nano Rebel. But I’m excited. Thousands of people participate in this every year and I’ve always wanted to as well.
Not much else to say. Things are working well on the writing front. I finished editing the first fifty pages of DS thanks to my awesome crit partners. Part of me likes the new changes and thinks it’ll be better, part of me hates them (that would be the same part that loves all things first draft). Gloss is currently getting ripped to pieces so I can put it back together. In the mean time, I’ve been looking at places to sub it. And needless to say, no one’s going to get rich off writing short stories for token payments (less than one cent per word.)
And that’s about it. Looking forward to the Halloween party on Friday and Nano starting on Sunday.
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